Mile high: Winx thriving ahead of return to favourite course

By Chris Roots & Michael Lynch

12 September 2018 — 5:48pm

Winx is set to bid her spring farewell to Sydney in Saturday’s Colgate Optic White Stakes over her favourite trip of the Randwick mile.

There are seven rivals in this group 1, which shapes as Winx's 11th top level success at headquarters and her 20th overall. She is again at prohibitive odds of $1.10 with Beteasy. Stablemate Unforgotten and Le Romain are considered her only real challengers at $13 in betting.

Trainer Chris Waller remains comfortable that the champion mare continues to progress into her campaign after wining the race named in her honour on her return a month ago.

“She is great and can’t see any reason why she can’t continue on a bit longer,” Waller said. “Her run beyond Saturday is not locked in yet, it is likely to be in Melbourne.

“We haven’t given up on keeping her here. She can go two weeks, four weeks, wherever she goes. I said at the end of last prep it is one run at a time, and we will stick to that.”

Winx went to the Turnbull Stakes before the Cox Plate last year, and it is the favoured path once again.

Her winning run, which stretches over three years and across 26 races, has had its home at Randwick. She has 15 wins there, and the 1600m has been her best trip.

Winx has won eight races from the mile start near Alison Road – seven at the top level, including an Epsom, a Doncaster and the past two George Main Stakes, where she beat the subsequent Epsom winner on both occasions.

“She is just constantly in the zone and everything is going to plan. The jump-out last week was perfect. It was just enough to keep on top of her with the four weeks between runs,” Waller said. “She will love stepping up to the mile.”

Waller has always said he will retire Winx when she shows signs that she has had enough. But while she continues to win, there is no reason to end her career.

Owners Debbie Kepitis and Peter Tighe enthralled the audience at The Valley's A Legendary Night when they spoke about their wonder mare, how they came to buy her and their ride along the way as first she became a champion and then a legend.

It's been assumed for a long time that, if she saluted at The Valley at the end of October for a record fourth Cox Plate, that might just be her swansong.

But Tighe told the audience on Tuesday night that it might not be the end of the road after this spring, which would indicate a return to her hometown.

''Chris always says let Winx do the talking and she will tell us ," Tighe said.

''If she is to race in the Cox Plate, it will put her out of the breeding season this year. That leaves the door ajar for early next year.

''It will be hard to take the racing away from her to send her to the breeding paddock.''

Tighe said much would depend on how she came through her exertions if she won a fourth Cox Plate.

'There's going to be a time either late this year or early next year to make that decision,'' he said.

Winx would have little to prove in Australia, and an overseas trip highly unlikely.

With the benefit of hindsight, Winx's owners admitted the time to travel might have been when she was a four-year-old rising five after her first Cox Plate. Now she is a seven-year-old who would be rising eight next northern hemisphere summer.